Wednesday, October 22, 2014

For fans of the series, the launching of Heroes Online
about three weeks ago was a major event. The game, which had acquired a cult
following with its second and third titles (produced by 3DO) never really
managed to live up to its own popularity again, its 4th, 5th
and 6th installations failing lamentably to deliver the magic of the
initial few iterations. Obviously, since heroes of Might and Magic III, every
other subsequent title was aiming to match its success. That was the benchmark
for Heroes Online too, a tactical MMO RPG which had a surprisingly quiet launch
and which generated few ripples in online gaming circles, despite the fact that
it seems to be an effort relatively well-received by the community.

The creators of the game, Blue Byte and Ubisoft, have
tried to adopt the Heroes III recipe wherever they could, but the resulting
product turned out to be a sort of Diablo/WoW/Heroes cocktail-hybrid, which is
much more reminiscent of a dungeon crawler than the original title. While the
battles are indeed turn-based, the actual game itself isn’t, as that would make
a horrible MMO obviously. The strategic depth of Heroes III is thusly obviously
lost, but the world, brought alive by the surprisingly beautiful graphics, is
still interesting enough to get old Heroes fans hooked.

The game itself tends to become a little repetitive
after a while, and the various mobs the player has to defeat on his way to ever
higher levels lack most of the appeal of the original Heroes crowd. They seem
to be a sort of motley crew of generic monsters assembled from the unsuccessful
iterations of the game as well as from other games/the random imagination of
the creators.

The game is free to play, but there’s a Hero Seals
system which allows players to take various short-cuts for real money. Hero
Seals have to be bought for money, but some can also be acquired by simply
logging in every day and picking up the bonus rewards.

The bottom line: despite some shortcomings, Heroes
Online is a surprisingly playable title. The graphics are great, and some of
the battles are indeed tactically challenging and rewarding.

Philip Thalberg works for Gosugamers, home of the most
popular Hearthstone forums and
community discussion.